


One Night at the Orpheum

by Kicker



Series: Pre-War Shenanigans [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, OC Crossover, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Sexual Content, Smoking, Smut, Smutty Backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 19:43:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7814653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kicker/pseuds/Kicker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before the war, before the world burns, the Combat Zone is known as the Orpheum. A place you can find music, theater, musical theater, and (perhaps most importantly) alcohol. </p><p>On this particular evening, you'll find a military man on a rare night out with his friends, and a stressed-out lawyer propping up the bar.</p><p>He's not Nate, and she's not Nora. But they can probably make it work for a night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Night at the Orpheum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deichqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deichqueen/gifts).



> A bit of pre-war raunch for [deichqueen](http://deichqueen.tumblr.com)'s Sole, Wade Russell, and [mine](http://kickerwrites.tumblr.com/), Corinna May, before timelines diverge and everything goes to shit.
> 
> You can read at least part of Corinna's post-war story in my series, [Red Flags and Flight Suits](http://archiveofourown.org/series/396475). ;)

Ah, the Orpheum. The sign beside the door says it all. Come for the music! Come for the friends! Come for the reasonably priced alcohol!

It doesn't exactly say that on the poster, not in words, anyway. But the cutesy illustration of a couple of couples on a double-date, all clinking their glasses together happily with musical notes flapping around them like tiny, weird-looking bats, well. If that's not a call to get drunk, what is?

Corinna slides a bill across the bar, one far larger than it needs to be. She kinda wishes she could be in an old cowboy movie, snarl _keep 'em coming, bartender_ and just have a bottle slapped down in front of her. City ordinances probably prohibit that. In fact, she thinks she might have read some casenotes about the reason for it in the last few days. So the guy brings her one single drink and some change and then glares at her until she pushes most of it back toward him.

Everyone's gotta earn a living. His job probably sucks more than hers.

Probably.

She swirls the liquor in the bottom of the glass and rests her nose on the edge of it. The fumes burn through her sinuses and go some way to clearing her head. Ironic, really.

Then the doors to the venue crash open, and a few notes of yet another song she hates burst out into the bar before being shut back out.

Civilization, baby... _fuck off_.

A guy wanders up and leans casually against the bar. Close, but not too close. He holds up his hand to the bartender, fingers splayed, _five_. Five beers. Poor bastard's obviously getting the round in. At least he gets to escape that fucking song.

She glances up at him and gets a quick flash of eyes that are far more blue than they have any right to be. He looks away, slaps down a bill of his own, then grabs the bottles between his fingers and disappears back toward the venue without a second look.

And Corinna's glass is suddenly empty. So she calls over the bartender for another.

  
It's five, barely ten minutes before he returns, the same guy as before. She knows it's him because he picks the exact same spot, he has a bottle in his hand and he doesn't do a damn thing to catch the bartender's attention. Dark hair, plenty of it, thick stubble on his cheeks that's just edging into beard territory but not quite. Looks intentional, like he puts at least some effort into not looking too scruffy. At the same time, not a shave-every-day preppy asshole.

Not that she's looking at him that closely, of course.

She stares into this next, _only by the glass, ma'am, Sheriff's orders,_ drink and wonders how it's possible for every week to get worse. Oh, it'll get better after you graduate. Oh you need the first year in a firm for it to really settle down. Oh, well, you never get that far in the first five years. You just gotta be patient, Corinna. You can't just expect success to drop in your lap like a hot guy at a bar.

She senses something beside her, not movement, not directly. More of a change in the quality of light. A lamp on the far side of the bar, being blocked out by a person standing in front of it. The whole place suddenly seems darker, more intimate.

"Not watching the show?"

He's leaning forward on the bar now, arms folded. He's twisting his bottle on the varnished wooden surface, his thumbnail just scratching at the paper label wrapped around the neck. Gwynnett Pale. A little flavorless, perhaps, but maybe he's just following the crowd.

She could ignore him. He might try and ask again, but eventually he'll lose interest and walk away. But his shirt sleeves are just short enough to show a hint of definition to his arms, and the way he's leaning over the bar is showing off an ass that's more than half way to impressive.

She swirls the dregs of the scotch and watches the trails drip down the inside the glass.

"Nah," she says. "Can't stand this kind of music."

He nods, slowly, and carries on twisting the bottle, only glancing at her when he lifts it to his lips. "Begs the question," he says, when he's returned the bottle to the bar. "Why are you here?"

_Well, I just happened to end up with two tickets I didn't want for a show I didn't want to see because the person I didn't really want to go to it with, but you do that kind of shit for friends, right? Went on a date instead._

But that's a long story and she's not one to go for the sympathy vote, so she gesticulates with her hand at the bottles arrayed behind the bar, although that's not exactly the truth either. She's drinking the cheap shit they don't even put on display.

Lying by omission.

He nods, and gives her another flash of those blue eyes. "Bad day, huh?"

One unwelcome client confession. One set of evidence compromised. And one very unfortunate article in the newspaper. Bad day. Bad month. Bad life.

She stares into her glass again. "You could say that."

At the faint sound of applause, he saunters away to the door, pulling it open and peering through. He shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks on his feet a little, and if Corinna didn't know better she'd think he was deliberately pulling those jeans a little tighter around his ass, just for her benefit.

The ass at which she's currently staring.

The ass from which she has to very quickly look away when he turns around.

With any luck he won't have noticed the way her hair's still moving, curls bouncing off her cheek.

_Good one, Corinna. Smooth._

She acts casual, which is at least one thing that does come naturally to her. "You're not interested either, huh?"

"Nah," he says. "Not really my thing. But you know, friends wanted to come. I was in the area. I tagged along. So, uh. What's your name?"

Her gut reaction is to tell him to fuck off. But he's pulled a packet of cigarettes from a pocket, and she hadn't even realized how much she needed a smoke until he offered it to her with a slight raise of the eyebrow.

"Corinna," she says, plucking one out, trying not to think about the little honesty box on her desk.

 _It has been_ //zero// _days since you last smoked._

_Fuck off, honesty counter._

"Russell," he says, but there's a little pause before he says it and it's not that he's concentrating on opening the fliplighter, that's a practiced move. He's not sure whether to tell her his real name, which means he wants something he can forget in the morning.

_Fine by me._

"Nice to meet you," he says, and she smiles because it's a long time since anyone's said that to her and seemed to mean it quite as much. She smiles because when she puts the cigarette between her lips, he watches them, rapt, and she knows exactly what he's thinking. And she smiles because as the flame sparks up and reflects in his eyes, she's thinking it too.

She sucks in a lungful of smoke, and closes her eyes to blow it out into the air.

"So," she says, flicking the cigarette over an ashtray that's suddenly appeared in front of them. "What do you do?"

"Military," he says. "You?"

"Law," she says.

He lets out a breath, suspiciously close to a laugh.

She gesticulates with the cigarette, now, unimpressed, _what the fuck is that supposed to mean?_

"Sorry," he says. "You just don't look much like a lawyer, is all."

"Oh," she says. "What's a lawyer supposed to look like?"

He takes a breath and faces right toward her.

"I dunno," he says. "But if they all looked like you, I'm sure the world would be a much happier place."

She echoes his breath-laugh, and finishes her drink. "Give me a few years," she says, "I'll be as dull and gray as the rest of them."

The irony of course is that all her colleagues are in their bright, peppy, clean-cut garb. Power dressing, or some shit. Yellow shirts are all the rage, every other person in the building looks like an extra from a bad holiday camp movie.

Funeral garb, is what they say about how Corinna dresses. And not just her colleagues, her bosses, too. But they compromise. They can take her dark lipstick from her cold dead hands, but the jewellery only goes back on outside the office. And of course, the joke is that under her jacket, they can't quite see the cut of the dress, tight over her waist, smooth over her hips, smooth over everywhere in fact.

The jacket's slung over the chair next to her right now, a sliver of silk lining glowing blood-red in the bar's lights.

She sits up straight to stub out the remains of the cigarette, leaning forward just far enough. When she looks back at him, his eyes take a moment to return back up to hers.

He has the decency to look slightly ashamed. "You caught me," he says. "Sorry. Couldn't help myself."

The door to the venue slams open again, loud, revealing a couple heading arm-in-arm toward the bar.

When Corinna turns back, he's moved just a little bit closer.

"If I said you had a beautiful body," he says, "would you hold it against me?"

"Really?" she says. "Wow. You military guys really don't get out much, do you."

In reply, he just grins and leans in for a kiss. He tastes of beer, and warm smoke, and just enough mint to tell her he probably crammed some gum in his mouth before coming out here to talk to her.

It's good, it's nice, but the doors crash open again and now she's annoyed because there's suddenly people everywhere, shouting after suffering the noise of the show, and a holotape of the exact same songs starts playing reedily through the bar's tannoy system.

Civilization baby, _oh for fuck's sake._

He must sense her irritation because he murmurs. "Little noisy, here, don't you think?"

"Yeah," she says.

"What do you say we find somewhere a little quieter?"

"Friday night," she says. "It's going to be like this everywhere."

"Huh," he says, and she knows exactly what he wants her to say.

_My place is pretty close._

She says it.

  
In the foyer he helps her on with her jacket. It's not cold but his fingertips make contact with her skin and it's just enough to make her shiver as though it were. He leans past her to open the door to the outside world and as he does there's a dip of his head toward her and the ghost of a touch on the small of her back.

She stops on the sidewalk to give him his chance to back out.

"Didn't you have some friends in there?" she asks.

The corner of his mouth turns up, and his eyes drop to the floor.

"Did you already tell them you weren't going to be back?"

The smile doesn't move but his eyes do, coming right back up to hers. "A man can dream, can't he?"

"A man doesn't have to," she says, reaching out, trailing her fingers down his chest. "At least, not this one."

She turns and leads the way. The street's noisy with traffic, but she can still hear her own heels tip-tapping on the concrete, and she knows guys like that because she likes that too. As they walk, they talk about the weather, his friends down from the coast for the weekend. Small talk, avoiding what's really on their minds.

At her apartment building, he stands stiff in the elevator, his weight balanced carefully between his feet, almost at attention. He doesn't try to pin her to the side of it, as appealing a thought as that suddenly is. He doesn't touch her at all. Maybe a sign that he might even be nervous, or perhaps he just doesn't like enclosed spaces.

She unlocks her front door and hopes there isn't too much shit all over the place. Quick glance shows the worst damage is a discarded coffee cup on the table. That and a somewhat incriminating bottle of scotch beside it.

Benefits and drawbacks of a seventy-hour working week.

"It's not much," she says, throwing her jacket and purse on the couch. It's not home, either, but it's somewhere. Somewhere the sun's been burning in through the windows all day, so somewhere that's stiflingly hot. She heads over to the windows, unlocks them, drags them open and breathes in the cool night air.

He joins her, slides a hand around her waist and drops a kiss onto her lips.

The apartment block across the street is close; hardly any of the windows are lit up, though, it's either too early or too late for the inner city crowd to be home. He breaks away and looks up toward it. "Pretty close," he says. "They could look right in, if they wanted."

She shrugs. "Good luck to them," she says. "What are they going to see?"

What _are_ they going to see?

And maybe he understands that challenge because he smiles and reaches down for the hem of her skirt. He pulls it up, fingernails just dragging over her skin. He slides his hand down the front of her underwear, just a gentle touch, not to distract too much from the kiss he crushes onto her lips, his tongue forcing them apart.

She's not sure if he's pulling or she's pushing, but they're moving toward the couch anyway, in a slow and almost controlled descent that ends with her thighs either side of his and his hands hard on her ass, pulling her in as close as she can get.

He smiles into every kiss she pushes onto his lips, murmurs his appreciation when she finds a way to press herself against him, when she rests her elbows on his shoulders, and when she nips her teeth into his earlobe.

Then he wraps his arm hard around her waist, lifts her up, and twists around to drop her back onto the couch.

"Oh my," she says.

He reaches his hands up under her dress and hooks his fingers in her underwear, again, but this time he pulls them down, his fingernails dragging along her thighs in the other direction. Down they go, over her thighs, over her knees, and over her feet. He tosses them aside and with a slow and satisfied exhalation of breath, he runs his hands back up her legs, pushing her dress up along with them. When his hands reach her ass, he grabs a hold, and drags her right to the edge of the couch. The movement's so sudden she reaches out to catch herself, but only ends up with a handful of cushion.

There's a moment, then, with both of them smiling like idiots at each other, where probably neither of them quite know if he's going to unbutton his pants and get straight to the fucking or carry on with the long slow build. Then he leans in and touches his cheek to her inner thigh. He presses a wet kiss against the skin, and then another, further up, and then another until his tongue is on her clit, his beard sharp on her skin, and his hands still clutching tight to her ass.

He waits until she's fucking _aching_ for it until he slips his fingers inside her. She knows the sounds she makes aren't elegant but fuck elegance right now.

"You like that?" he asks.

"Keep going and you'll find out," she says.

He grins, the asshole, and now he makes her watch while he licks his lips and not _her_ but when he does it's like a thousand volts of electricity running her through. She reaches back and digs her nails into the cushions and she really tries not to push her pussy right in his face but it's so fucking good and she wants more, she wants everything he can give to her.

The release is hard and good and over all too fast.

She takes a deep breath, tries to get her thoughts back in order.

"Oh _my_ ," she says, and it strikes her just then that having a guy on his knees, eyes hot with lust and maybe pride at what he's just managed to do? That might just be one of the finest things she's ever seen.

And then she gets to pull his clothes off him, and that's pretty fine too. Turns out he's not just a nice ass and a strong pair of arms, he's got a whole great body thing going on for him. There's another controlled-uncontrolled movement, this time toward the bedroom, _we need more a little more room to manoeuvre, don't you think?_ , and he lies back on the bed and invites her onto him and she is more than happy to oblige.

His hands grab her ass, bring her down onto him hard, but he lets her move as she wants, and she knows he's going to enjoy that.

"You're fucking incredible," he says, through gritted teeth.

"Hula-hooping champion," she says.

When he comes he rises up with his hips just as she'd done not so long before, growling and digging his fingers into her flesh. He stays inside her long enough that she can bring herself off against him again, then drop down to her elbows, her forehead on his chest. His hands only gently touch her shoulders, as though he's afraid to hold her down.

He's probably right to be.

"No regrets?" he asks.

She looks up, to make sure he's still smiling as he says it. He is.

"None so far," she replies.

They share a cigarette out on the balcony, a glass of scotch on the couch, then he pushes her back into the bedroom and fucks her into the mattress hard, her wrists caught in his hand, her knee trapped in the crook of his elbow. The look in his eyes is fierce but she knows she's got nothing to worry about.

She's still thinking of those eyes when she drifts off to sleep.

  
She wakes to the sound of rain against the window, to the soft gray glow of the morning. She turns her head around to find him looking right at her. He reaches out, runs his hand over her lower back, barely able to reach with how far apart they've settled during the night.

The bed creaks as he moves toward her, behind her, out of view.

"Corinna," he says, and there's a soft touch at the base of her spine, a hand, or lips; she can't tell.

"Russell," she says, not moving. Her skin prickles, both warmed and cooled by his breath, even more so as he lets out a low chuckle.

"I'm glad we both passed the test," he says, and she laughs, too, because it means they've both been in that position before.

His lips - she's sure that's what they are now, because she can see his hands sliding over the sheets and under her arms - reach the back of her neck and he lowers himself down onto her, his chest flush against her back, his thighs around hers.

"You're still okay with this, right?" he asks.

"Sure I am," she says.

He pulls her up by her hips, nudging her thighs apart with his own. He encourages her to sit back, one hand holding her around her waist, another raking back the hair from her face to dig teeth into her neck. She tilts her head to let him reach more, and the hand drifts down to her breast.

"Whoever manages to settle you down is going to be a very lucky man," he says.

 _Settle down? As if_ , she thinks. But she doesn't say that.

"Or woman," is what she says.

"Huh," he replies. "Now, there's a thought."

It's almost too much, this rasp of stubble on her neck, these fingers on her skin, and the cock filling her entirely. The release is building, and she grabs his hand to make it stay still, to stop him pushing her too far but she can't do it with both, and she can't stop herself from pushing back against him, getting more, taking more, ordering him to give her more.

Then when it comes, when _she_ comes, it sings through her, white-hot, burning her from the inside out. The whole world could burn and she would not give a single fuck. She would let it burn to the ground and not lift a finger to build it up again.

But then it really is too much.

"No more," she says, pulling away even as another wave passes over her. "I can't... oh God."

She rolls onto her back, stares at the ceiling, even the scratch of cotton sheets on her skin enough to make her tense. She wants to reach out, touch him, let him know that it's not _him_ it's her, it just happens sometimes but her fingers just bunch in those sheets and she has to concentrate on breathing instead.

When she finally recovers herself, she props herself up on her elbow. He's lying back on the pillows, the sheet draped over himself, almost demurely and - she's relieved to see - he's looking very pleased with himself.

"Congratulations," he says. "That's a new bar against which I'm going to judge myself. Forever."

He holds out his arm and gestures to it with his head. She's not sure they're really the kind of people that should be cuddling, not together at least, but with her head on his shoulder and his hand just gently resting over hers, she lets herself pretend for a moment. And she does get to run her hand over his stomach, over the light trail of hair that runs down to his cock. And she does get to hear the slight exhalation of breath when she repeats the movement, and when her fingers stray a little lower.

_It's what we've both been thinking about, right?_

His arm drops away real easy as she pushes herself up, and as she runs her tongue over her lower lip. She drags the backs of her fingernails up his thighs, and presses his hips back down when they rise to meet her. She touches him with the very tip of her tongue, just for the briefest of moments.

"Oh God," he says. "Is it bad to say I've been thinking about this since I first saw you?"

She settles herself down between his knees. "Is it bad if I have, too?"

"Oh, Christ," he says, and he closes his eyes up tight and presses his head back onto the pillow.

Then she waits, waits until he opens up those blue eyes and fixes them on hers. She takes him in her hand and in her mouth, and can't help but smile at the groan he lets out. It's not long before a hand pushes into her hair, soft, though, guiding, not forcing, not until it finds her jaw and actually pulls her away.

"Slow down, doll," he says. "Or I'm gonna come."

"That's the whole point, baby," she says.

"Right in that beautiful mouth of yours?"

She dips back down and hums her agreement, and it seems like only moments later that she's sucking every drop from him, as his hands bunch in the sheets and his cheeks glow red with heat. Now it's his turn to lie flat, motionless, staring at her with wild eyes that even after everything say he's not quite done yet.

She lies back, and he comes to rest his head on her shoulder, his leg slung over hers, and if his hand heads straight for her breast she doesn't even care. She looks over toward the window. The rain has stopped and the sky may be brightening, but it's still early. He doesn't have to go just yet.

One night at the Orpheum. One day in her bed.

That will have to do.

**Author's Note:**

> Wanna know what they look like? Well, post-war, this is [Russell](http://airagitt.tumblr.com/post/147859821308/russel-russel2045-sole-survivor-for), and this is [Corinna](http://kickerwrites.tumblr.com/post/147995130255/onthedansefloor-corinna-may-the-gorgeous-sosu).
> 
> There's also a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/kickerwrites/playlist/0X0jfdfvYJ8NrtiuKpJwvk) for this because I am apparently total trash for this surprise!OC ship. \o/


End file.
